Paperback to hardcover Rebinding the classics

A busy bookshelf looks chaotic, and my mind is chaotic enough without visual noise, so I'm on a quest to rebind our paperback books so that they fit into the house's colour scheme.

I'm still working out the best method, but so far I've done The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (excellent book, by the way), and A Clockwork Orange. To be fair these aren't my books, but I was generously allowed to practise on these as they were in pretty poor condition.

I rebound these, turning them from battered paperbacks to hard-bound books. Illustrations were created using the cover art from the paperbacks. 

For the Kraken, I used Illustrator on my iPad used my Apple Pencil to trace over the cover illustration, simplifying it into a silhouette. For A Clockwork Orange, I live-traced the cover graphic in Illustrator.

I used my Cricut Maker 3 to cut out the images and lettering, and used heat transfer foil for A Clockwork Orange, and black vinyl for the Kraken. I'm not sure either option is perfect... the foil got a little bit melted, and the vinyl may end up coming off. But I think they turned out ok.

If you look closely I've completely botched the alignment of lettering on the spine of The Kraken Wakes, but I like to think one of those sea monsters is dragging it down.

Tags

Photo of a rebound copy of The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham. Photo of The Kraken Wakes rebound in grey book cloth with black imagery. Photo of rebound books, A Clockwork Orange and The Kraken Wakes, stacked in a pile, viewed from the front. Photo of rebound books, A Clockwork Orange and The Kraken Wakes, stacked in a pile, viewed from the top. Photo of A Clockwork Orange rebound in black book cloth with gold imagery. Photo of rebound books, A Clockwork Orange and The Kraken Wakes, stacked in a pile, viewed 3/4. Image of the cover art for my rebinding of The Kraken Wakes. The cover and spine image used in my custom binding of A Clockwork Orange. Screenshot of cover options and work in progress for my custom A Clockwork Orange book cover. Screenshot of work in progress in Adobe Illustrator to create the custom cover art for The Kraken Wakes.